


Agapē

by JustaGibbsgirl



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Slibbs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29938509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustaGibbsgirl/pseuds/JustaGibbsgirl
Summary: Even from six thousand miles away, his actions still speak louder than words.
Relationships: Jethro Gibbs/Jacqueline "Jack" Sloane
Comments: 28
Kudos: 87





	Agapē

**Author's Note:**

> Agapē - love through action

Perimeter check accomplished, guard duty over for the rest of the night, her feet moved of their own accord, dragging the rest of her tired body along with them. 

Entering her tent, her quick visual safety scan almost missed the plain, brown package that rested on the thin military cot that she now called home. 

Stunting her forward motion, a breath that felt heavier than her own, escaped her lungs. And somehow she knew. She just knew that the name on the return address would be equal to the name she spoke in her dreams at night. 

Her feet held heavy in one spot, the thunderous sound of her heart in her ears pushing away every other sound around her. 

She swallowed hard, the lump in her throat suddenly coated with a desert's worth of sand. 

Looking down to her hands, she willed the unbidden trembling to subside, begging her mind to let them steady.

She had heard from Leon.

From Kasie.

From everyone. 

Everyone...except him. 

The three months behind her could easily have been mistaken for an eternity. And for a land that rarely saw a cloudburst in the sky, a land that was forever blanketed in sunshine and sand, she felt like she’d been drenched with pelting rain from a storm cloud that only seemed to appear over her head. 

Grieving a living person was once again turning out to be just as fucking hard as grieving a dead one. 

Each night, the film reel in her mind whirred to life in the darkness, replaying the unspoken words she regretted and the unhindered kiss that she didn’t. Sleep would finally claim her once she allowed the memories of his touch to act as her weighted blanket, soothing the anxiety of her restless heart. 

Removing her vest and gear, she warily eyed the package, eventually dropping down next to it to remove her boots. If she were being honest with herself, she’d swear she could feel the warmth of his touch emanating directly from the box itself. 

Her fingers traced over her own name, scrawled in classic Gibbsian handwriting. The sigh that escaped her lips carried pieces of her heart with it. 

Her eyes drifted to the military issued satellite phone next to her thigh, the reach-out-and-touch-someone resource that was her constant companion, and that Gibbs had yet to utilize.

Had she expected a phone call? Her foolish heart certainly had. 

But Leroy Jethro Gibbs didn’t love through words; he never had. His modus operandi was to love through actions; through the sweetened cup of diner blend that had always found its way to her desk each day; through the elephant-in-the-room painting that had appeared out of thin air, cementing her place in his life; through the hand carved darts that had materialized once he knew a dartboard was a balm to her over-anxious mind. 

Reaching for the bundle, she was surprised at the dense heaviness of it, not sure what she had been prepared for but knowing for certain she had expected something considerably lighter. 

A few straight cuts with her blade and the brown paper lifted away. A tactical boot box stared back at her. Shaking her head, she chuckled. Boots. Leave it to the man of bare essentials to feel the need to send her the necessities. 

But as the lid hinged open, her anticipation gripped a little tighter at the heartbeat that was massively thudding against her chest. This felt like a helluva lot more than boots. 

Brown eyes met tissue paper. And a yellow post-it. 

_RULE # 20 - Always look under_

Still shaky fingers pulled the note away, slowly lifting away the thin paper. At the sight of the red material beneath, her head dropped to her chest, eyes squeezing tightly shut, trying desperately not to allow it to happen, trying and failing to hold it all back.

Tears that she had pushed inward, that had threatened her for weeks but had never spilled, now waterfalled down her cheeks, the drops against fabric suddenly the loudest thing in the room. 

She pulled the oversized hoodie from its place and held it to her face, her nose rubbing against the USMC lettering. The scent filled her lungs and she was lost to the moments that suddenly accompanied it. 

In front of her, in the musty desert air, in the thick dry heat, surrounded by canvas walls, she saw him. 

Her mind saw him in that hoodie, an easy hip lean against the side of a boat as he watched her sifting through casefiles from her place in the soft cushions of a basement chair. 

Her mind saw him in that hoodie in the backyard, fielding balls with Phineas, waiting for the errant hit to land at his feet. 

Her mind saw him in that hoodie, bent over an open fireplace, expertly flipping steaks that sizzled when doused in beer. 

She sighed heavily, allowing the mirage of the silver-haired Marine to vanish more quickly than she would have preferred. Setting the sweatshirt aside, she said a small prayer to the man upstairs that somehow the desert would not steal away the scent of him too soon. 

Looking back to the box, her eyes found more tissue paper beneath where the hoodie had rested, with a second post-it note demanding her attention. 

_RULE # 8 - Never take anything for granted._

‘Gibbs and his damn rules’, she thought, a smile tugging on her lips as she wiped away a fresh streak of tears. He’d written them out as if she _hadn’t_ memorized every last one of them. Her eyes rolled at the thought. As if there had been a choice.

Moving the second set of paper to the sides, her smile grew wider, a lump reforming in her throat as the cool texture of glass connected with her fingers. 

_“Kentucky’s finest?”_

_“Oh, I’m gonna crack that. You in?”_

It was the kiss that launched a thousand ships. A kiss heard ‘round the world. A kiss that had landed her smack dab in the middle of an ocean of blue. And the bottle that started it all, was now cradled in her dusty hands.

He’d kept the tag on it, the tag she had written, still attached to the twine that was wrapped around the neck of the bottle. New ones had been bought and disposed of but this one...this one he’d kept and refilled. And now it was here with her, a keepsake, a symbol, a treasure that had traveled thousands of miles to fill her with the warmth of him.

Carefully setting the glass on the makeshift plastic tote nightstand next to her, she filled her lungs fully before turning back to the box once more. 

The last yellow post-it caused laughter to escape her lips and fill her heart once more with the love that this man had created inside of her. 

_RULE # 23 - Never mess with a_ ~~_Marine’s_~~ _Army Lieutenant’s coffee if you want to live._

She inhaled deeply, praying that the next gift was exactly what she thought it would be. 

It was.

She practically squealed with delight, her eyes lighting up like a kid on Christmas as she lifted a 5 lb bag of sugar and an even bigger bag of diner blend to go with it. 

Hugging the coffee to her chest, the scent umbrellaed upwards, allowing her to find in her mind the quiet, dark-brew moments over the past three years that they had both tried to write off as friendship but that had drifted considerably deeper.

Her smile faded slightly as her gaze drifted from one gift to the next. She knew that her sudden departure had made no sense to him. She knew that it was the reason she hadn’t heard his static-y voice crackling over the com-link. 

But how could she explain to the man of no words something that barely made sense in her own head? In hindsight, she certainly would have come up with something a little less helter-skelter and a little more by the book, but at the time, in that moment, it had been clear as crystal. 

Was it worth mentioning that the crystal was becoming a little clouded as of late? A humanitarian effort would always be worth the fight. But was she the one that needed to be fighting it? 

Her sandbox dues had long ago been paid. She owed nothing to this barren land. But she did owe something to Darya, to the woman who had saved her despite having her own dues to pay. 

Still….

Maybe his last words to her, maybe his _“I’m not sure about that_ ” response to the notion of not needing her was what she should have listened to. 

Maybe reading between the lines of wanting her on the planet AND at NCIS was what should have spoken volumes above the rest of the chatter in her head. 

But she was here now. She had made her military-issued bed of nails and now she was resigned to lying in it. The heaviest of her regrets, though? That she hadn’t policed her brass when she’d walked away; that she’d allowed so many pieces of her heart to be carried back on that plane to DC with him.

In the midst of the noise of her mind, the calmness of her own heart reminded her that she was here to continue a mission; to continue what her friend could not; to carry on with the journey that would lead young girls into womanhood armed with the one and only thing that could actually save them from the precipice... _knowledge_.

As she reached to close the lid, her eyes caught a swatch of color peeking out from the last of the tissue paper. Curious that there could even be one more gift wedged into the square box, her hand slid through the paper until she found it. 

A soft gasp escaped her throat and pushed past her lips into the dry desert air as she lifted the flat object into the light. The empty box fell to the ground, forgotten, as her forearms landed hard on her thighs, the last treasure clasped tightly in her fingers. 

Staring back at her now was a glossy postcard print of an elephant. The same damn elephant-in-the-room painting that, for the past two years, had tumbled her heart with every glance. Her fingers traced the outline, allowing the thud of her heartbeat to match, beat for beat, the cacophonous rhythm that had captured her when she had first seen it on her office wall. 

A picture really was worth a thousand words, somehow crossing oceans, crossing mountains and now, crossing deserts, only to unravel her heartstrings and speak to her in the only way Gibbs knew how. 

And now, the only thing left to do, the only gift left unopened, was waiting for her on the opposite side of that postcard. 

The card suddenly carried the weight of the whole damn elephant, slowing the motion of her hands to turn it. 

If she had ever questioned whether he would wait for her, ever questioned whether a piece of him belonged to her, ever questioned whether there was a place for her in his life, the answer now lay trembling in the very same hands that had so carefully held his heart. 

  
_Lock up when you’re done. ~Gibbs_

  
  


***

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, as always, to coolbyrne for the advice and encouragement.


End file.
